Splinters
by butterflie
Summary: Noctis can't recognise the face in the mirror staring back at him, and needs Prompto to reassure him that he's real. Promptis. Spoilers. Written for the FFXV Kink Meme.


Written for this prompt on the kink meme: "Basically, Noct suddenly going from being 20 to being 30 and feeling like his body and his face don't really belong to him. Looking in the mirror and seeing a stranger, etc."

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 **Splinters**

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The face in the mirror isn't his.

Noct reaches out, touching his fingers to the glass, tracing his reflection—following along the curve of his jaw, across his lips, over his nose, around his eyes. They're his, but they're not. He doesn't know the face staring back at him. This face isn't as soft as his. There's more lines in the forehead and around the eyes. The jaw and nose are a little more defined. Most telling of all, there's _facial hair_. Noct has never had facial hair. It takes him a month just to get a five 'o clock shadow.

So it's not his face, and yet—when he moves his head, or blinks his eyes, or sticks out his tongue, the face in the mirror copies him, so even though it's not his, even though it _can't_ be his, somehow, it is. The disparity of this leaves him feeling jumbled up, and disconnected, as if he's detached from his own body somehow, looking at himself from the outside.

The person he sees in the mirror isn't _really_ him, is it? It's just some stranger that he's watching. He wants to believe it, wants to believe that face can't be his, that it's not him, because none of this feels real and he can't make sense of it. How can it be him?

Fear grips him then, sudden and intense, as a thought hits him. He's been told that he's been gone for ten years, lost inside the Crystal all that time. What if it really _isn't_ him? What if the person in the mirror really is a stranger, and Noct isn't real, isn't actually here? What if he's still trapped in the Crystal, and someone that looks only vaguely like him has taken over his life? It's ridiculous, so fucking ridiculous, and he _knows_ it, but—

He just doesn't recognise himself, no matter how hard he tries. It's terrifying. He can feel tears wetting the edges of his eyes, a few sliding down his cheeks, and when he looks in the mirror, the stranger is crying too, so it _must_ be him, but his brain absolutely refuses to reconcile that image of himself with the memory of his appearance that he last saw, the one that he knows to be him. How could he have been in the Crystal for ten years? How did he lose so much time? Wasn't it enough that he was meant to die young, to not be able to grow old beside all his friends, to know that he would keep aging rapidly while they kept their youth? Now he's been robbed of what time he _did_ have, growing older without ever getting to experience it, until he's become someone else he doesn't know.

At that, anger pulses through him, and before he can think about what he's doing, he's slamming his fist into the mirror, into the reflection of his face that isn't his, shattering the glass and slicing up his knuckles. Blood drips slowly down into the sink, but he pays it no mind. He doesn't want to look at the face that isn't his any longer.

"Noct?" Prompto's voice comes hesitant through the door, knocking softly. "Are you okay? We heard something breaking..."

Noct lets off a choked up cry, and then Prompto's opening the bathroom door, wrapping arms around him and pulling Noct to him as he quickly takes in the scene. Noct grabs at him, clings onto Prompto desperately as he curls his fingers into the back of Prompto's shirt, buries his head into Prompto's chest as he takes deep, shuddering breaths, and tries not to break down into tears. "Am I real?" he asks, hating how thick and broken the words sound as they come out. "Am I me?"

"Noct, what—" Prompto's confused, not understanding the question, but it doesn't matter to Noct. He doesn't need understanding. He just needs to hear someone say it.

" _Am I_?" he insists, voice anguished and distraught, digging his fingers harder into Prompto. " _Prompto, am I real_?"

"I—" Prompto's hold on him tightens, and Noct raises his head to look into Prompto's face. It's almost as distressing as looking at his own face, because Prompto looks as much a stranger to him as Noct does to himself. Tears build up, rimming his eyes red, but Noct refuses to let them fall. Prompto's face softens. "You're real, Noct," he says gently, quietly. "You're you."

Noct wants to believe it, he really does, but he doesn't know how to. How can he, when he can't even be sure that Prompto is real? "Prom—"

Soft lips against his cut him off, and Noctis sags in Prompto's arms, relief flooding through him then, because _this_ is something he knows, this is something familiar and comforting, this is real, and that means that Prompto is real, and that _Noct_ is real, because Prompto has only ever kissed him. He tilts his head for a better angle, kisses Prompto back, lips pressing insistently, low, needy whimpers rising from the back of his throat. Prompto swipes a tongue across his bottom lip, and Noct parts his own, letting him in, deepening the kiss, and Prompto tastes good and sweet and _familiar_ , just like he remembers, and he wants to laugh and cry at the same time.

Instead he sighs out against Prompto's lips, and then Prompto's pulling back, his blue eyes searching Noct's, the depth of emotion in them almost staggering. "You're real, Noct, okay?" he says, voice catching on the last word. "You were gone for ten years, but now you're here, you're okay, and you're _real_. Don't ever doubt that."

Noct nods, and glances over to the shattered mirror. His face stares back at him through the shards and splinters of broken glass. He still doesn't recognise it, still doesn't find it familiar, but he knows it belongs to him. Prompto wouldn't lie to him. He's real. The face in the mirror is his.

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I didn't mean for the Promptis at the end, it just happened. Oh well :D Feel free to leave a comment, if you wish! Thanks for reading~


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